Californian of the Year 2011: Pedro Ramirez
Let’s start with the person who is not my Californian of the
year: Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. For a guy in his mid-20s who isn’t even from
California, Zuckberg has gotten too much attention already.
But that
doesn’t mean that the Californian of the Year (an august title that comes with
a cash prize of nothing) can’t be a young person, or come from the technology
world, or be an immigrant to our state. California is a place where different
people and different cultures are married together, so my four runners-up are
like a marriage gift.
– Something Old: Jerry Brown and his
(much younger) wife Anne pulled off the political feat of the year, turning
back Meg Whitman’s $160 million campaign.
– Something New: The Democratic
consultant Jude Barry and the founders of the Silicon Valley start-up Verafirma
developed and pushed an electronic signature technology that could open up
politics by making signature gathering for initiative petitions and voter
registration easier and cheaper. The state’s political elite, which doesn’t
want a more inclusive and inexpensive politics, is fighting back, particularly
its labor movement, which foolishly put on Barry on a list of the banned.
The Irony of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Governorship
Arnold Schwarzenegger entered the governor’s office with little interest in
ideology and partisanship. The voters of California have expressed time and
again that as a whole, they, too, look down on avid partisanship. According to
polling, voters indicated they wanted a governor just like Arnold Schwarzenegger. But as he leaves office, Schwarzenegger’s poll numbers are in dismal territory and bi-partisan, non-ideological leadership seems an ocean away on a ship that is never going to dock.
I recall California’s premier historian, Kevin Starr, recognized
Schwarzenegger’s potential when he first came into office as perhaps another
Earl Warren — a man who could secure support and allegiance across party
lines. Starr talked of Schwarzenegger as a member of the “California Party,”
that is, someone who focuses on state issues without concern for the
political necessities that make up the planks of party platforms.
Schwarzenegger’s current popularity rating with the voters certainly could reflect that he didn’t fix the budget and other problems, as he promised to do as a candidate. But, the fact that those fixes did not occur also means the people were not so wild about following Schwarzenegger on his different crusades.
In Pleasantville, it’s Volunteers vs. Public Sector Unions
An earlier version of this
essay appeared in City Journal
Online.
Sometimes the local government staff I have the great pleasure of
working with say the darndest things.
Prior to giving a speech on civic participation for a group of city and
county employees just north of San Francisco, I chatted with a county volunteer
coordinator about her job. "It sounds like fascinating work," I offered, "you
must interact with a lot of different people on a variety of projects."